Arsene Wenger's faith is rooted in a mantra that has never wavered. It is: if
we keep doing this, which I know to be right, success will follow

Are Arsenal a “dream”, a “mirage”, or a “pain” – or all three, as Alisher Usmanov, the Tolstoy of the oligarchs, suggests? One label that can be pinned on with them without fear of challenge is stubborn, because Arsène Wenger’s men threw themselves into a game they just needed to draw like the gamblers they habitually are.

The mission was simple. One point would take the Gunners into the next phase of this competition for the 15th successive season. Yet they burst from the traps with both full-backs rammed up the pitch and Nacho Monreal, a makeshift centre-back, so far forward that Per Mertesacker had to scream at him to stand goal-side of Ciro Immobile, the Borussia Dortmund striker.

In other words, to hell with those calls for defensive circumspection, for urgent anti counter-attacking measures. Arsenal have become so vulnerable to breakaway goals that an air-raid siren would not go amiss here in north London. But Wenger’s faith is rooted in a mantra that has never wavered. It is: if we keep doing this, which I know to be right, success will follow, as winter follows autumn.

That world view has become less and less credible to fans, ex-players and the owner of 30 per cent of the club. You know it is turning weird for Wenger when a billionaire Uzbek speculator chooses an American television station to start quoting Russian proverbs about “old ladies” and roofs falling in.

The roof is seldom raised here these days. Yet there is no real possibility of Wenger ever abandoning his ideas about the game in favour of late-night brainstorming sessions to make Arsenal harder to score against.

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Instead, the team’s first act here was to show that absolutely anyone in the famous red and white livery can score – and quickly. Even Yaya Sanogo, who recorded his first competitive goal for the club, after 1min 12sec: a stroked finish through the legs of Roman Weidenfeller, the Dortmund keeper.

With Alexis Sánchez in the starting line-up Arsenal will never lack locomotion, ambition, desire. Many fans here worry what would happen if Sánchez suddenly dropped out of football to become a Buddhist monk, say, and the rest of the side had to fill the huge commitment void. He ran himself to a standstill against United on Saturday and was similarly masochistic on this European stage, aided by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who marked his 100th appearance with a pleasingly assertive performance.

Sánchez earned his reward for industry with Arsenal’s second on 56 minutes: a right-foot curler after a typically zestful surge. Whatever Arsenal are doing wrong to be eighth in the Premier League table, signing Sanchez was inspired.

Depleted by raids – mainly from Bayern Munich – Jürgen Klopp’s team were a shadow of the one that faced Germany’s biggest name in a Champions League final. Nowadays they look bigger, stiffer, slower and less artful. They also started this game with 12 points in the group, which took the edge off them. The perfect big-name opponents, then, for Arsenal to blow a smokescreen over their poor league form and the wounding defeat by Manchester United.

Wenger’s response to Usmanov’s attack was to paint him as an outsider who had deviated from the sacred code of in-house honesty while also betraying an ignorance of Wengerian culture. Usmanov probably thinks he is pretty smart, but Wenger is no fool either, and used the pseudo-poetic Usmanov outburst to pull his squad in tighter. The tycoon, Wenger seemed to say, had shown himself to be un-Arsenal.

Casting Paul Merson – another critic – as an external enemy was rather harder, because ‘Mers’ won five major honours in these colours. Yet Wenger seems unperturbed by the job of continually fending off those who say his 18-year reign has run its course. He is less indignant this season than he was last year, though the BBC’s Jacqui Oatley might disagree.

So what is the real Arsenal, the Wengerian Arsenal, and where is it going after the worst start to a Premier League campaign: 17 points from 12 games, with four wins (they had nine at this stage last year)?

“The potential of the team is there but there is no critical evaluation of mistakes and they need to need to acknowledge them,” Usmanov said, veering from proverbs to Harvard Business School.

“Because no genius can retain the same level of genius if they do not acknowledge mistakes. It’s only when you admit your mistakes that you can get rid of them.”

In the hours before this return to Champions League combat Wenger reached for a sentence that defines his attitude to adverse comment. He said: “I especially believe in my players, and in their quality and spirit.” How lucky they are that he never stomps into the training ground and tells them: “I’ve put my reputation on the line for you lot. But no more. Half of you are finished.”

Instead he sends them out to uphold his cherished principles. And this time they repaid his faith. Yet that 15-season sequence of making it through the group stage prompts a look back to 2006, when Arsenal reached the final with the following starting XI (Dennis Bergkamp and Robin van Persie were unused substitutes): Lehmann, Eboué, Touré, Campbell, Cole, Pires, Silva, Fabregas, Hleb, Ljungberg, Henry.

But enough European reveries. It is England and the Premier League where Arsenal need to recover their power base.